The account posted at Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david-and-sheryl-crow/karl-rove-gets-thrown-und_b_46501.html

was reminiscent of Politically Incorrect at its best. I was never a regular watcher, but I did tune in from time to time. On a couple of occassions, I recall seeing Alexandra Paul just decimate the rightwing think tank clones that were on.

What most so-called "political junkies" never seem to realize is that feeding on trivia makes you trivial. You are what you eat. And so it's no big feat for ordinary people to have a better grasp of issues than they do. What set Alexandra Paul apart was not simply that she knew more, but that she was totally in command, totally centered in her role as citizen. She was not there to entertain.

Ditto Crow and David trying to talk to Karl Rove about global warminig:

In his attempt to dismiss us, Mr. Rove turned to head toward his table, but as soon as he did so, Sheryl reached out to touch his arm. Karl swung around and spat, "Don't touch me." How hardened and removed from reality must a person be to refuse to be touched by Sheryl Crow? Unfazed, Sheryl abruptly responded, "You can't speak to us like that, you work for us." Karl then quipped, "I don't work for you, I work for the American people." To which Sheryl promptly reminded him, "We are the American people."

....

Ultimately, we were left wondering what on Earth Mr. Rove was talking about when he said "the American people." If more than 60% of American voters, the Supreme Court, over 400 cities, the US National Academy of Sciences, numerous major US corporations, and others don't constitute the American people, then what does?

The primary purpose of the press these days is to maintain Karl Rove's bubble, so that Versailles can keep on believing that they are America. And when they play farmer and milkmaid, they are the American farmer and milkmaid.

How wonderfully rude of Crow and David to remind Rove otherwise.

I’m glad Reid is “defending” his “the war is lost statement,” but this clip from ThinkProgress still made me want to scream:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/23/video-reid-defends-iraq-liar-statements/

Apparently, a statement (four words, to be exact) becomes universally controversial when the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Kristol weigh in with invective – the factual & empirical basis of the statement be damned.

Here’s Wolf Blitzer: “The Senate Majority Leader didn’t repeat his controversial comments of last week that ‘the war is lost’ today. You had a chance to sit down and speak with him. How did he finesse that?”

Yes, how did he “finesse” standing by the glaring obvious point he made about the war’s failure? What kind of rhetorical tricks did the Senator employ to prevent Bill Kristol from calling him a traitor?

Then there’s what’s-her-name with:

“The senator was very careful not to once again utter that phrase.” and “I gave Senator Reid several chances to take it back and he declined.”

She gave him several chances to “take it back” -- wasn’t that gracious of her?

The term "conspiracy theory" is ambiguous and potentially misleading. In an obvious sense, any hypothesis about a conspiracy is a "conspiracy theory."

But that's not what's usually meant, given the social history of conspiricism, which dates back in modern form to two main streams--European anti-Semetic myths dating back more than a thousand years, and secret society mythology dating from around the time of the Crusades, but vastly heightened with the French Revolution, which reactionaries blamed on the Bavarian Illuminati, among other groups.

A "conspiracy theory" in this second sense is part of a belief system that is highly--if not completely--resistent to empirical disproof. It functions as a quasi-ideological overarching explanatory mechanism, and posits a diabolically clever, though relatively small coterie of hidden conspirators whose power is wildly disproporationate to their numbers.

Now, it's entirely possible for the Ledeen/Niger story to be assimilated into a conspiracy theory of type two, and many have surely done so. But as a matter of historical record, it began as a conspiracy theory of type one, with rather strong pedigree.

It came from an interview that BBC-trained radio journalist Ian Masters conducted with Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA in April, 2005. Masters asked what Cannistraro would say to the assertion that Ledeen was the source of the forgery. Cannistraro said, "you'd be very close."

More information can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_forgery#Origin

I'm completely agnostic about this explantion. But I damn sure think we're way overdue having a serious investigation into the matter.

Don't you?

Please, let's not respond to the Edwards-is-a-vacuous-pretty-boy trolling of that last comment.

Even when people chime in with witty smackdowns to commenters like that, it ends up totally derailing the discussion. I understand that message-board debates are usually pretty shallow and unenlightening (that's a fair description, in any event, of my own, mostly regrettable, contributions) . . . but it's still discouraging that even on a site like Salon, some buffoon can run into the room (or -- hey! -- the "salon"), shout a bunch of idiotic insults at people, and totally stop the conversation dead in its tracks.

I'm all for hearing more conservative voices on sites like these -- and my own politics aren't exactly those of the average Salon reader, I'm guessing -- but these sorts of comments are the equivalent of playground name-calling; they don't have any good effects on anything (they don't foster discussion), and neither do the clever (and not-so-clever) responses.

And yes: I appreciate the irony that, in this comment, I'm doing exactly what I'm asking others not to do. I guess what I mean is . . . like, as a general policy, can we try to ignore the dumbest and shittiest of the crackpot commenters?

http://journalism.nyu.edu/portfolio/books/book53.html

David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (Knopf, 1979)
Reissued in paperback by University of Illinois Press in 2000

Twenty-one years after the release of Pulitzer Prize-winner David Halberstam's best-selling backstage glimpse into a formidable American media industry, The Powers That Be was reissued in paperback, and the world it celebrates is gone. The book dances with the characters at CBS, Time, the LA Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post - a hegemony of powerful players, still juiced-up on Watergate and driven by unsullied tenets of print journalism. Their dialogue - rife with the challenges of Vietnam War coverage, the Nixon scandal, and encroaching corporate pressures - paints a picture of a profession at its high-water mark, obsessed with balancing what its audience wants with what it needs.

No one is sadder than Halberstam to watch those waters recede. His introduction to the new 2000 edition is a bleak summary of what he considers to be the media's rapid descent into service and celebrity-centered journalism, ledes that bleed, and a new generation of editors and producers who bite their nails over ratings instead of accuracy.

If we are to believe him, and there is certainly enough new media criticism that corroborates his perspective (see Robert W. McChesney's Rich Media, Poor Democracy), Halberstam's chronicle of the rise of the American media has become the wistful memoirs of a faded endeavor.

But the sheer devotion and fervor of the characters who guided journalism to its climax remains inspiring. With rich, concise strokes, Halberstam flits between what he has deemed to be television and print's most prestigious institutions, letting news figures and breaking stories point the way through the behind-the-scenes decisions that turned the media into such a viable force after Watergate. He fills the stage with an entire cast of news world players who lend this work a dimensionality and voice that has allowed it to endure.

- - website of NYU's Dept. of Journalism

In memoriam, David Halberstam 1934-2007.

A reporter's reporter.